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I'm a big fan of Princess Superstar. Got into Last Of The Great 20th Century Composers last year, and just recently heard her new album, Princess Superstar Is, which on reflection may be better... There's what sounds to me like an audibly deliberate effort to emphasise the aspects of her rhyming style that are similar to Eminem's (especially on 'Bad Babysitter', and I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the single), but she still sounds pretty individual, and you've gotta love her for this:
"Everyone tells me I'm the female Eminem -
Well all I'm gonna talk about is getting fucked up the ass then
Don't be mad Em I'm just playin'..."
It's aiming a half-sincere, half-mocking "don't be offended, it's just a joke" excuse at Eminem of all people that's the stroke of genius...
I don't think 'bubble gum rap' is entirely accurate - although actually, I think the term sounds like a good thing, can't see what would be bad about that - because she does have some serious lyrical content as well - see 'Too Much Weight'.
She seems to be one of a growing number of artists who aren't 'mainstream' hip-hop, but whose sensibilities defiantly buck the archetypes of backpack/beardy rap - eg, Princess Superstar has a sense of humour, she raps about sex, she raps about partying, she doesn't take herself too seriously, and she's definitely got a kind of pop thing going on... Anyway, I think this is an entirely good thing, and one of the things that interests me about it is that this forces fans and especially music writer fans of 'alternative' hip-hop to either re-think some of the false divisions they rely on, or be more blatant about what those divisions really are. In theory, anyway.
[tangential rant]
Here's an example of what I mean. I recently read (I think in a review of her new album in Careless Talk Costs Lives, sadly) some guy saying something like [paraphrase] "when Lil' Kim raps about sex she's pandering to male fantasies and demeaning herself, when Princess Superstar does it it's subversive and empowering". Now, if you actually examine the lyrical content of the two artists (for starters, it's not the only issue, but lets' keep this simple), that statement is fairly demonstrably untrue - it was never going to follow that simplistic either/or dichotomy, but they're actually remarkably similar in terms of the way they mix it up (the Princess has said that although she doesn't much like being called "the white Lil' Kim", she is a big fan). So if there isn't actually any difference in what they do, you have to ask, what's the big difference between them that means that indie rock critics take Princess Superstar seriously, but not Lil' Kim? And there's a fairly obvious answer.
[/tangential rant] |
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